Double Madness

by Caroline de Costa

  Drew appeared, and also gave the door a tug, but it didn’t budge.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ she asked.

  ‘The garage leads straight into the house. Two rooms at least on that side, probably bedrooms, windows shut and blinds drawn, and a bathroom, opaque glass window. Judging by the width of the house there’s another room in the middle at the back.’

  He measured the height of the wall with his eyes, then jumped up and grabbed the top, easily pulling himself up so he had a view of the whole back of the house. He’d lost none of the strength of his basketballing days, Cass thought, eyeing him.

  With a jump she did her own chin-up. He looked approving but made no comment.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Broken window. Could be evidence of a crime.’

  ‘Yep, indeed it could, Diamond. We’d better go in …’ He called again. ‘Hello! Anybody home? Mr Janvier! Mrs Janvier!’ He dropped back down onto the grass beside her.

  ‘Y’know, our street is just like this,’ he said to Cass. ‘In Brinsmead. You’ve been there. Only there’s no walled fortress like this one. In our street everyone knows everything about everyone else. Including my wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Cass. ‘I always think it seems like a great little community. Leila and your kids always have people dropping in. She always knows what’s going on.’

  Drew nodded. ‘So I think we should check out the neighbours here.’

  At that moment two small figures on bikes came from around the corner.

  ‘They’ve gone away,’ said the first one. ‘Before the cyclone,’ said the second.

  ‘My mum said they must’ve gone to France,’ said the first.

  ‘Is your mum home?’ asked Cass. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Number five. Yes she’s home.’

  ‘Are you the cops?’ A third excited small figure had made an appearance. ‘Cos you look like you are. Did they steal something? Are you going to put that crime-scene tape around the place?’

  ‘Yes, we are police but, no, there’s nothing wrong. We’re just trying to locate these people. Can we see your mum?’

  Drew and Cass followed the children back into Paradise Close. By now four more kids on bikes and skateboards had appeared to watch the action. From the front door of number five emerged a young woman in shorts and T-shirt, feet bare.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m Detective Diamond. Cairns CIB. And this is Detective Borgese.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ countered the woman. A normal response for unexpected meetings with police, Cass thought.

  ‘No problem, Ma’am. We’re just trying to locate Mr or Mrs Janvier, who we believe live in number eleven. The house looks as though no-one has been there recently.’

  ‘Janvier,’ the woman repeated. ‘I’ve never known their name, even though we’ve lived here four years. I just know that they’re Odile and Michel. They keep very much to themselves.’

  ‘Have you seen them recently?’

  ‘We’ve been talking about that – because of the cyclone, y’know … they weren’t here then. A couple of the men from the street did take a look over the wall to make sure the house was closed up before Yasi arrived, and everything looked all right. Maybe the last time we saw them was a week before that. We think they must be overseas. The yard looks terrible, trees down and so on, and the pool’s full of slime, but not really knowing them, y’know, well, no-one feels able to get into the yard and clear it up for them. We mowed the nature strip, my husband did, but that’s all. It’s funny, other times they’ve been away they’ve always got a garden service to come in. They both seem really neat and fussy. Always want the garden to be perfect.’

  She looked suddenly perturbed. ‘I hope nothing’s happened to them?’

  ‘We’re just making some routine inquiries,’ Drew answered. ‘Do you know what he does? Mr Janvier? Where he works? Or his wife?’

  ‘He’s a businessman. She told me that once. But I don’t know what, exactly, or where. She’s a teacher somewhere – she told Mrs Berry, the old lady across the road. She’s been here sixty years. Her family had the cane farm before the land was divided up. Mrs Berry told me Odile taught in one of the high schools. I don’t know where. None of ours are in high school yet.’

  ‘Did – does Mrs Janvier have her own car?’

  ‘Oh yes! A red Honda Prelude. And he has a four-wheel drive, a white Mitsubishi.’

  ‘And when they’re here, they go off to work each day?’

  ‘Mostly they go out late morning I think. I don’t often see them. I go at eight to drop the kids to before-school care because I work mornings. In the evenings I might see them pass by usually around our teatime. She’s in and out during the day. I’ve always thought she must work part-time.’

  ‘They have children?’

  ‘No. At least … no, I’m sure they don’t. I’ve never seen any. They have very few visitors and no-one who looked like family. And, y’know, she’s not really, well, maternal … she’s so elegant, that French thing. Always high heels and suits, and matching bags, and silk scarves, even to go to the shops.’ Aha, thought Cass, though she said nothing. That sounds like our woman.

  ‘Does anyone in the street collect their mail for them?’ Drew asked.

  ‘They’ve no letterbox!’ The young woman looked at him slightly oddly – Cass could almost see her thinking: he’s a detective, and he didn’t see that?

  ‘They have a post-office box,’ explained the woman.

  ‘Do you know which post office that’s at?’ asked Cass.

  ‘No, sorry. I really, y’know, hardly know them even though they live right there. They just make clear they want to keep to themselves. I might go six months without speaking a single word to her although we always wave if she’s driving past. And you can see – the house has a wall around it; it’s not like they want to chat.’

  ‘Have you ever been inside the house?’ Cass asked.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘And her husband? Does he mix with any of the men in the street?’

  The woman hesitated. Then said: ‘No. Not at all.’ Cass waited for her to speak again, and after a moment she said, ‘I guess I would say … that he seems like he’s under her thumb. He does all the shopping – I see him in the supermarket quite often, on his own. I’ve never seen her in the supermarket, ever, though you can see her in dress shops, in Cairns Central or Abbott Street.

  ‘And he seems to do most of the housework … from what you can see over the wall.’ She blushed at what she’d said, then laughed. ‘Oh, I won’t say we don’t talk about them in the street. We do. He never speaks to anyone, just drives straight past. At first, people here thought he was up himself, now they just think, well that’s how he wants it. But he’s often out in the garden and usually he keeps it perfect. That’s why it’s so surprising the place is such a mess now. But … I do hope nothing’s happened to them?’

  ‘We’re just making some inquiries. Thank you for your time – can I ask your name?’

  ‘Wendy. Wendy Egan.’

  Drew and Cass walked towards the car. The children had drifted away.

  ‘That broken window …’ began Cass.

  ‘Yep, I think we should go in through the back. Less public, though I’m sure we’ve got the whole street watching anyway. Let me do it, and I’ll open up for you if I can.’

  Behind the house, Drew pulled himself up and over the wall. From the inside he opened the small roller door and Cass followed him in. Through the broken pane of glass they could see a bedroom in considerable disorder.

  ‘Police! Hello!’ Drew called, and again his voice echoed through an empty house.

  He carefully put a hand through the broken pane, undid the lock, pushed up the window and climbed in.

  ‘Go around to the kitchen door and I’ll let you in if I can.’

  The door was bolted top and bottom but had not been deadlocked. Drew opened it and Cass stepped into a kitchen that seemed quite unremarkable apart from the smell
of rotting fruit. There were fitted timber cabinets, a microwave and oven, all quite clean. No dishes in the sink. A 2011 calendar with French country scenes hung on the wall, open at January. A digital wall clock read 11.15 but Cass’s watch read 3.22. The dishwasher was at the end of its cycle, its orange light glowing, and the timer on the microwave was flashing zeros. So the power had gone off with Yasi, then come back on, but nothing had been touched since. The fridge was purring, but its contents told the same story – there was mould covering butter, cheese and milk. On top of the fridge was a fruit bowl containing rotting pineapple and oranges.

  The living room was also tidy, with television, DVD player and stereo all in place, and speakers mounted high on the walls. There were a few framed prints, ornaments on shelves, copies of Vogue on a glass coffee table.

  Across a short passage on the garage side of the house were two rooms. One was a bedroom with a single bed made with military precision, a wardrobe containing male clothing, shoes precisely arranged and shirts and trousers hung according to colour. On the bedside table were a couple of books in French: a thriller and some science fiction.

  The second bedroom was larger, but it contained no bed and had an adjoining dressing room. Instead the whole area was taken up with clothes racks. In fact the room was packed with clothes – meticulously arranged women’s clothes. Dresses, skirts, shirts, pants, shoes, handbags and scarves were sorted by type and colour.

  ‘She must work in the fashion business, not a school,’ said Drew. ‘Or at least, worked …’

  Cass was looking at it all, puzzled.

  ‘No,’ she said, lifting up one after another of the items, ‘they’re all size 10 or thereabouts. And they’ve been worn, though they’re in good nick. I think these are all hers.’

  He looked amazed. ‘Surely no woman in Cairns needs a wardrobe like this?’

  ‘All very good brands,’ Cass was checking. ‘Like what our corpse was wearing. And the shoes and accessories are all coordinated too.’ There were large mirrors on two walls and a third mirror had a dressing table in front of it, covered with pots and tubes of makeup. ‘There must be at least sixty lipsticks alone,’ she remarked. ‘This woman is serious about her appearance. Was serious. If it’s her.’

  The final bedroom, with the broken window, was separated from the others by a bathroom and laundry that were well kept and contained little of interest. On the bedroom floor was a sprouting coconut, obviously from the tree outside, the culprit that had broken the glass during the cyclone. The wind and rain had got in. The carpet by the window was wet and mouldy and there was a pool of mud by the queen-sized bed. Bottles of makeup had been sent flying from the dressing table and cushions tossed about.

  And spread wildly about the room were several items that Cass pointed out to Drew: Hermès scarves.

  Cairns, February 2010

  Jane O’Malley sat at the desk in her surgery looking across at a new patient, a five-year-old girl named Kianna. The family had come up to Cairns from Brisbane about eighteen months ago, Kianna’s mother, Samantha, said. Previously they’d been patients of Trevor Symonds but for various reasons had decided to change.

  Jane noted that for some reason the mother seemed very nervous.

  Certainly the child had been through a lot in her five years. At the age of six weeks, she’d been diagnosed with hydrocephalus. Though her brain was normal, the fluid around it could not drain away. She spent four weeks in the Children’s Hospital in Brisbane having a shunt put in. And had been in and out of that hospital numerous times since.

  ‘I can see it’s been a difficult few years for you,’ Jane said to Samantha. ‘But she’s been fine for the past two years, is that right? You take her down to Brisbane to see Dr Skeggs, I see. He’s been happy with her, it seems. He last saw her six months ago.’ Jane knew Joe Skeggs, a paediatric neurosurgeon, a kindly man with six kids of his own. ‘So why have you brought her along today?’

  ‘It’s her teacher, really, that’s worried,’ Samantha said. ‘She’s just started school this year, you know, she started off sitting at the back of the class but the teacher moved her to the front next to the whiteboard. I didn’t think there was anything wrong, she’s as good as gold at home, no problems, but the teacher spoke to Brian, Kianna’s dad, told him she was concerned about Kianna’s eyesight. Brian wanted to take her to our GP … to … to Dr Symonds. But I said, I don’t want to go to Dr Symonds anymore, I hear Dr O’Malley’s very good.’ As she said all this she shifted in her chair and fiddled with her car keys.

  Jane smiled at the little girl. ‘Do you have trouble watching TV at home, Kianna?’ she asked. ‘What do you watch?’

  ‘Um … the Wiggles … but I have to sit up close or I can’t see it,’ Kianna said, as Samantha shuffled her feet uncomfortably.

  ‘Just pop up on that bed for me, pet.’

  Jane picked up her ophthalmoscope and looked deep into Kianna’s eyes. The optic nerves were swollen and cloudy.

  ‘OK, Kianna, you go and play in the toy room while I talk to Mummy,’ Jane said.

  Kianna gone, she said: ‘Samantha, she’ll need to go down to Brisbane again to see Dr Skeggs. Urgently. I think the shunt is blocked somewhere, maybe just partly, and the fluid is building up and pressing on the nerves at the back of her eyes.’

  ‘So … she’ll need another operation?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And … if I’d taken her sooner, back to Dr Symonds … would it have made a difference?’

  ‘I can’t answer that yet, until we know what’s wrong … but possibly, yes. I’m sure he would have referred you earlier if he’d looked in her eyes and seen what I’ve just seen.

  Unfortunately when you made the appointment, being a new patient to us, no-one realised that it was urgent.’

  ‘Oh, she seemed well,’ said Samantha, adding vaguely, ‘and I was busy with things, you know …’

  Jane bit her lip. There was more to this than Samantha was letting on. Why had she taken so long to bring Kianna to a doctor, and why had she changed doctors?

  ‘While I’m here,’ she said, ‘before I ring Dr Skeggs, I’ll just make a note of her last boosters – the shots she had before she started school. Dr Symonds gave her those, I suppose?’

  Samantha flushed. ‘No … no … I haven’t taken her back to Dr Symonds for some time.’

  Jane took off her glasses, pushed back her fair hair, and studied Samantha’s face carefully. ‘Well, it’s important to do these things. Kianna needs all the routine health checks as well as her special care.’ And, warming to the subject, she added: ‘What about you? Are you looking after yourself? Have you had a Pap smear, for example?’

  Samantha’s response was to burst into tears.

  ‘Samantha, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Promise, promise, you won’t tell? I’d feel so much better, talking to you … to someone.’

  ‘Of course,’ responded Jane. ‘Whatever you tell me is confidential. Is it a problem with your relationship, with … ah,’ she consulted her notes, ‘with Brian?’

  ‘No. It’s … Dr Symonds. He wanted … to have sex with me.’

  For a moment Jane was speechless. Trevor. Lyndall’s husband. Well, soon to be ex-husband. She knew him well. She and George tried to avoid him these days, although in the past they’d been much closer friends. Now that Lyndall had left him, Jane was in Lyndall’s camp. As were most of the town’s medicos. She knew what people said. She knew what Lyndall herself had said. She knew about the practice secretary everyone said he’d had an affair with, and a few stories about nurses. But patients? Even when Lyndall had suggested it was possible, Jane had thought he would have had more sense.

  Delicately, she asked Samantha if she wanted to tell her any more.

  ‘He was our GP when we first moved here. I had to see him so often – with Kianna, her having the shunt, and having to be so careful every time she got a cold or something. He always seemed so, well, cool, controlled, and, we
ll, being a doctor, knowing so much, you know. I guess I just, sort of, got a crush on him. Only he never did anything, said anything then.

  ‘Then about a year ago I found a lump in my breast. I went straight along to see him.

  ‘He was great, really reassuring, calmed me down, said he was sure it was just a cyst, not to worry, but he would organise for me to have a mammogram and an ultrasound straight away. Which he did. Then he sent me to another doctor – Dr Mellish – to put a needle in and take the fluid off the cyst. And then I had to go back to see him, Trev … Dr Symonds, for the results of the tests on the fluid.

  ‘When I went back, he made a special appointment for me one evening, after work, and he told me the tests were normal. I was so relieved. I began to tell him, not exactly how I felt, personally you know, just how grateful I was for all the help he’d given us, how much I admired him. Maybe it was my fault, maybe I said too much …

  ‘Anyway, then he said he wanted to look at my breast again, to make sure it was OK, and I could just sit there in the chair and take off my bra, not to worry about getting up on the couch. Which – well, naturally, I did what he said, he was the doctor, and everything … So I was just sitting there, topless, and then he began, not just to look at my breasts like a doctor does, but to stroke them, and to touch my nipples. And then I realised … how excited he was … and he asked me if I would … go all the way with him … said he found me … a knockout is what he said … and he said that he thought maybe I felt something for him …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘And?’ Jane prompted, hoping she didn’t sound too interested in salacious detail.

  Samantha sat up sharply.

  ‘Well, naturally I said no. I … I put my clothes back on as quickly as I could, and I ran out the door.’

  ‘But I couldn’t possibly tell Brian, he wouldn’t understand. He’s always been the jealous sort, he’d think I’d encouraged it, which I don’t think I did at all … But I couldn’t see him … Trev … I mean Dr Symonds again, you see; I couldn’t go to him again and take Kianna. And no way could I go for a Pap smear. But if I started going to someone else Brian would wonder why, and I didn’t know what I’d say … So I just put it all off, kept away from doctors altogether, until I really had to bring her.’